A singing lemur borrows an opera trick, and Taylor Swift adds four songs

A lemur that sings like a soprano

Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Turin have filmed wild indris, the only lemur known to sing, opening their mouths wider as their songs climb in pitch. The study, published on 21 September in PLOS Computational Biology, is the first direct evidence that the animals coordinate the opening of the mouth with the pitch of their song, the researchers said.

For anyone learning to sing, the finding describes an adjustment teachers ask for every week. Trained singers widen the mouth as the pitch rises, lining up the resonances of the vocal tract with the harmonics of the voice and making the sound louder, according to the University of Warwick. Singers know it as formant tuning.

The team analysed 83 video recordings of 19 wild indris in Madagascar. Motion-tracking software followed the upper and lower lips frame by frame, and each change in the opening of the mouth was compared with the change in pitch.

"Every time the pitch of an indri's song rose, we could see its mouth opening wider, frame by frame," said Dr Chiara De Gregorio, the study's corresponding author and an honorary research fellow at Warwick.

Because the two species parted so long ago, the researchers attribute the likeness to convergent evolution: the same solution, reached independently. For an animal calling through dense forest, the university said, the technique could decide whether a song carries or fades.

Also today

Taylor Swift adds four songs to last year's album

Taylor Swift released The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore on 25 September, an expanded edition of her 2025 album with four new songs: 'Patient Zero', 'Cleveland!', 'Pink Clouding' and 'Babylon'. All four were written with Max Martin and Shellback after Swift travelled to Sweden to celebrate the album's success, NME reported. 'Patient Zero' is built on electronic percussion and a string line, and uses infection as a metaphor for a destructive relationship. Carrying one image through a whole lyric is a technique any beginning songwriter can borrow.

The original Sugababes are back

Sugababes released 'Ghost' on 24 September, the lead single from a self-titled album due on 12 February. It will be the first album from the original trio of Keisha Buchanan, Mutya Buena and Siobhán Donaghy since their debut, One Touch, in 2000. "It feels unmistakably us," the band said. A vocal trio depends on blend: three voices matching vowels and volume closely enough to sound like one.

Nothing But Thieves go back to where they started

Nothing But Thieves released their fifth album, Stray Dogs, on 25 September. The band from Southend wrote it over five months on tour, then recorded it in the studio where they made their 2015 debut. The approach, the band told NME, was to "write a great song and record it well". It is a test worth taking into the practice room: a piece that works with one instrument and one voice needs production to support it, not to rescue it.

A 600-capacity room opens at Battersea

Apple Music Hall, a 600-capacity venue at Battersea Power Station, opens in London on Monday 28 September with Elton John. NME reported that it was designed to combine the feel of an intimate club with the production capabilities of a much larger arena, with a 48-speaker spatial audio system and two recording and mixing studios. Tickets for the first three shows go on sale at 9am on Monday.

Practice

Try this today: open up on the way up

A ten-minute exercise built on the indri study. Stay in a comfortable range throughout, and stop if anything feels tight or scratchy.

1. Hum gently for two minutes on notes that feel easy.
2. On an "ah", slide slowly from a comfortable low note to a comfortable high note and back. Do it three times without pushing.
3. Repeat in front of a mirror, letting the jaw drop a little further as the pitch rises. Keep the shoulders and neck loose.
4. Record one slide with the mouth barely open and one with it opening as you climb, then listen back and compare the top notes.

A teacher can watch the jaw, the tongue and the breath together, which a mirror cannot. Find a singing teacher on our voice lessons page.